Reviews — Ramsay's Physical Geology. 277 



with salt pseudo-niorphs, seen in the eastern part of this range, and 

 which he describes as replaced by marine beds to the west, is an. 

 entirely unfossiliferous group, whose Triassic age has no better 

 foundation than a choice of guesses. 



This being a special illustration of our author's system of coast- 

 lines, we are bound to conclude that his most confident assumptions 

 may be but visionary suggestions, the value of which depends 

 largely upon unknown possibilities. And when some of these 

 assumptions deal with a mass of formations so vast that the British 

 Isles might be excavated vertically from within them twice over, or 

 many larger countries made out of their materials, the whole being, 

 on the negative evidence of absence of marine fossils, referred 

 entirely to inland freshwater deposition, we may well pause before 

 accepting in full the conclusions which the paper would establish. 



Indulgence in such speculative flights as these has a dangerous 

 tendency to encourage the charlatanism of a would-be " higher 

 culture " in geology, when put forward with the arrogance of know- 

 ledge ; and so far as the case before us is concerned, examination, 

 has but confirmed the doubts felt at first, as to whether we were 

 really reading history or romance. W. 



II. — The Physical Geology and Geography of Great Britain : 

 a Manual of British Geology. By A. C. Bamsay, LL.D., 

 F.K.S., etc., Director- General of the Geological Survey of the 

 United Kingdom. With a Geological Map, printed in colours, 

 and numerous Woodcuts. 5th edition. 8vo. pp. 639. (Stanford, 

 London, 1878.) 

 "VTOT much more than ten years ago this excellent work first 

 J_M appeared as collected notes from the Professor's lectures on 

 the Geological Structure of the British Isles, elucidating the opera- 

 tions of water, ice, and other natural agents in producing and 

 modifying the surface of the earth in general, and of the British 

 area in particular. By gradual increase of explanatory and illustra- 

 tive matter the fourth edition had become twice as thick as the first, 

 and proportionately valuable to the student desirous of recognizing 

 and understanding all the characteristic features of mountain, moor- 

 land, and valley, sea, lake, and river, which interest, or ought to 

 interest us both at home and abroad. The fifth edition, lately 

 issued, has attained double the bulk of the last, by the introduction 

 of thirteen chapters on the historical, successional, or strati graphical 

 geology of Britain. This portion has necessarily considerable value, 

 possessing the interest which the teachings of so accomplished a 

 geologist as the author must carry with them ; but the palaeontology 

 is not equally well handled as the older portion of the work, in 

 which the physics of geology are so well and plainly discussed, so 

 perfectly illustrated, and so enthusiastically worked out with the 

 results of the author's own researches and reasonings. 



Those portions of the new chapters which treat of the physical 

 geography and hydrography of each successive geological epoch will 

 be useful to many readers, since they extend the results of what 



